Never throw anything away!

A short while ago, I received a parcel that was packaged with a sort of semi-shredded kraft paper that had been opened out to form a soft lattice. It made excellent packaging material with the contents arriving safe and sound, and of course is much more environmentally friendly than bubble wrap or those polystyrene chips. It struck me that although it could be saved and reused for the same purpose, it might also find a place in my crafting - and today it has done.

I've made a background by teasing it open in some places and leaving it tightly closed in others, and mounted it over a square of red card so the red peeps through the gaps.

The lace and doyley are from my stash. The butterfly is cut with the good old Cuttlebug butterfly die, but instead of using one of the matching embossing folders, I used the classic Cuttlebug "Swiss Dots". The letters are also upcycled, leftovers from an old Scrabble set.

Just changing the subject slightly, the reason I own several Scrabble sets and have one that I actually wore out, hence the spare tiles, is that I used to be a fanatical Scrabble player - and I was very good at the game too, often scoring 600+ points in a game. I was runner up in the Townswomen's Guild National Championships twice in a row and got to the London based final stages of a couple of open championships. But sadly it reached the point where none of my local friends or family would play against me for fear of being thrashed, and to keep my hand in I would have had to travel to clubs and tournaments all over the country.  My daughters were young then and I didn't want to start spending weekends at home, so I gave up and started crafting more seriously instead. Nowadays I'd have probably found lots of people to play against online, but that option didn't exist then.

There, you've learned something new about me, and will never challenge me if I use the word QIBLA in a blog post!

Right, moving back to the task in hand, I am sharing this with

Alphabet Challenge - E for Embossing Folders
Butterfly Challenge - R for Recycle and/or Ruby Red
Cuttlebugmania - Butterflies
Fab n Funky - 3 or more layers